Life in the fast lane - PowaKaddy

Its 30 years years since PowaKaddy first kick-started the
electric trolley market in the UK. To mark the launch of
the new Freeway family for 2013, Dominic Pedler
reflects on the ups and downs of this pioneering
British brand and talks with Chairman & CEO,
John deGraft-Johnson, now back at the brand he
helped build following last year’s change of ownership

Tom Watson would have been
oblivious to it as he strode to
Open glory at Royal Birkdale,
with Alfie Fyles on the bag, in
the summer of 1983. But a few
yards away in the tented village,
a brand new invention was
being unveiled that would soon
prove a boon for anyone without
a professional caddy.

Making its debut was the PowaKaddy Classic,
the first commercially released electric golf trolley
ever seen in the UK.

Designed by mechanical engineer Joe Catford
with the help of his son David, the pair returned
from Birkdale that week with a couple of hundred
orders for their eye-catching contraption.
Fast forward three decades, three changes of
management and some half-a-million worldwide
trolley sales, and David Catford is back at the
helm of PowaKaddy with John deGraft-Johnson,
his business partner from the company’s most
successful era.

It’s certainly been a long and winding road for
PowaKaddy in every sense, from initiating the
entire sector and enjoying a prolonged monopoly
within it, to striving to maintain pole position as
the market mushroomed.

The Classic itself saw its first major makeover
in 1989, when the heavy welded steel-and-cast-aluminium
chassis was replaced with a strong plastic
moulding that, overnight, halved the weight of the
trolley and scrapped the fiddly take-apart tubular
construction.

While that model (renamed the Legend) would
continue for another decade, it proved to be a victim
of another Joe Catford trolley, The Hill Billy,
which first introduced foldability to the electric
sector.

Hill Billy is now part of the PowaKaddy group
and the two brands enjoy a symbiotic relationship
for sharing technologies while remaining distinct
products with different price points. Indeed, the
origins of today’s PowaKaddy range date from the
turn of the millennium when the company
debuted foldability with their own more
robust, contemporary styling, electrics and
features. That first Freeway would go on to
sell some 385,000 units, the best-selling electric
trolley of all time.

Fourteen years on, the 2013 Freeway family is
PowaKaddy’s first launch since the company’s
well publicised 2012 takeover, and sports construction
and features developed from the ‘new’
team’s combined half-century experience in the
market. New styling and chassis materials,
improved foldability and various on-board electronics
are among the standout features for this
season (see Freeway To Heaven sidebar), confirming
just how far trolley technology has come since
the early days.

Similarly, lightweight and longer-lasting lithium
batteries are also transforming our perception of
the electric trolley in terms of ease of transport and convenience, while prices
are falling to a point where the
upfront premium over bulky
lead-acid is more clearly justified
by lithium’s longer-term
value for money.

PowaKaddy remains the
dominant brand but the company’s
electric empire keeps
steadily expanding. For while Hill Billy continues
to enjoy its own niche, the new owners also bring
to the table the expertise and patents of EZiCaddy,
the brand they established in 2010.

With technology sharing between the three
brands, along with economies of scales when
sourcing components, the group looks set to continue
its illustrious heritage, as we reflect with
Chairman & CEO, John deGraft-Johnson.

Gi: From a standing start, how has the electric
trolley market grown over these three decades?
By 1990 there were around 50,000 trolleys out
there – which was still less than 1% of the six million
golfers in Europe – even after the first seven
years. Since then, the market has grown some tenfold,
to the point where about 1 in 10 golfers now
own an electric trolley. 75% of world sales are still
in the European market so there’s still great
worldwide potential.

Gi: PowaKaddy had a virtual monopoly in the
‘80s and ‘90s. How has competition changed the
market for you and the consumer?
We had over a 70% share until the turn of the millennium
when competition increased as new
brands emerged. It’s great for the consumer who
now has more options and more competitive
prices. The new companies have also helped grow
the whole market and raised awareness among
golfers. Of course, we’ve had to work harder to
maintain our position.

Gi: Electric trolleys used to be associated exclusively
with older golfers. When did the image
change and the product become ‘cool’?
In the mid 1990s there was a growing awareness of the medical benefits – for all ages – of using
a trolley rather than carrying. In that sense,
it has become a game improvement product.
Racier styling over the last decade and
the rise of various electronic gizmos have
also helped to appeal to a younger market.

Gi: Reliability has been perceived as an
issue down the years, for trolleys in general.
How have PowaKaddy’s rates of
returns and repairs declined, and what
areas have improved most?
Batteries used to be the main problem –
either not lasting for at least a year or, occasionally,
failing half way around the golf
course. Some years, returns were over 5%.

These days, batteries are much more reliable,
with 2% returns, or better. Another
landmark has been the shift from mechanical
potentiometers to electronic encoders
as a way of controlling trolley speed. These
are at least six times more reliable. Our
overall failure rates on trolleys have now
come down to around 1%.

Gi: How important is the fact you assemble in
the UK and PowaKaddy’s British branding?
The British element is in respect of design and
assembly – though we do employ many Chinese
components – as well as our after-sales service.
Consumers do like to feel that we are supporting
UK industry and a condition of the new owners’
purchase of PowaKaddy was to retain the British
element and keep the employees on. Ultimately, our
reputation has been built on delivering quality,
functionality, innovative technologies and performance.
And we’ve tried to take these core values to
the next level with the new Freeway family.

Gi: What are your favourite design highlights of
the 2013 Freeway family?
We are particularly pleased with the way it folds
and also the ‘pause and resume’ functions. These
are the essential practical features that make the
trolleys easy to operate and enjoyable to use. I, personally,
am a gizmo man so I like all the latest displays
and timers [such as on the PK Freeway Sport].
But we’ve carefully designed them to ensure they
are very simple to use.

Gi: PowaKaddy has always been known for its
innovation, but why did ideas such as radio control
and the Touch handle not catch on as
expected?
The radio controlled RoboKaddy [of the late
1990s] was a great concept with valid technology
– and it actually proved quite popular in the
US. But it had issues: there were accidents with
people showing them off in car parks and driving
them into cars. And many golfers, anyway, prefer
to keep the trolley close to hand. The Touch was
dropped, prematurely in my opinion, by a nervous
management team because of early teething problems.
But many people still regard it as a great
concept and we may well revisit it.

Gi: The company also went through a rocky
stage in 2006 with the P5 model under a previous
management team.
The P5 was rushed to market. The key to gauging
the failure rate for any product is to launch it
slowly and ‘debug’ quietly and efficiently as you
go along. Some 50,000 units were put out before
the realisation that the failure rate was nearer 10%
than 1%. The cost of resolving it proved too great.
Gi: How important is the tie up with the PGA and
England Golf: and to have names like Oli Fisher
and Tom Lewis associated with the brand?
We feel it’s important to support the industry.
PowaKaddy has a history of partnerships – both at
the playing end and the commercial end. We’re
proud that the PGA and England Golf are happy to
be associated with us.

Gi: What’s the Tomorrow’s World for electric trolley
design?
We’ve looked at several futuristic designs. Golfers
can expect trolley frames inspired by sophisticated
racing bikes, with cool shapes justified
by structural reasons as well as
fashion. We’re already seeing this
with oval, or elliptical, tubes which
make much stronger frames
than conventional circular
tubes. Materials will also
improve: just as we’ve gone
from steel to various grades
of aluminium, we’ll see more
graphite which can be more
easily manipulated, allowing
trolleys to get lighter and with
even better foldability.